ABERCROMBY, JOHN, the author of several
esteemed works on gardening, was the son of a respectable gardener near
Edinburgh, where he was born about the year 1726. Having been bred by his
father to his own profession, he removed to London at the early age of
eighteen, and became a workman in the gardens attached to the royal
palaces. Here he distinguished himself so much by his taste in laying out
grounds, that he was encouraged to write upon the subject. His first work,
however, in order to give it greater weight, was published under the name
of a then more eminent horticulturist, Mr Mawe, gardener to the Duke of
Leeds, under the title of Mawe's Gardeners' Calendar. It soon rose into
notice, and still maintains its place. The editor of a recent edition of
this work says, "The general principles of gardening seem to be as
correctly ascertained and clearly described by this author, as by any that
have succeeded him." And further, "The style of Abercromby,
though somewhat inelegant, and in some instances prolix, yet appears, upon
the whole, to be fully as concise, and at least as correct and
intelligible, as that of some of the more modern, and less original, of
his successors." Abercromby afterwards published, under his own name,
The Universal Dictionary of Gardening and Botany, in 4to.; which was
followed, in succession, by the Gardeners' Dictionary, the Gardeners'
Daily Assistant, the Gardeners' Vade Mecum, the Kitchen Gardener and
Hot-bed Forcer, the Hot-house Gardener, and numerous other works, most of
which attained to popularity. Abercromby, after a useful and virtuous
life, died at London in 1806, aged about eighty years.

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